And somewhere in Bellhaven, there was another recording that might prove what had really happened to Michael Reed.
Marcus waited until the footsteps faded before moving again.
Aaron Pike's confession had changed everything. Until that moment, Marcus had believed his father might have discovered evidence of corruption and died in an accident that someone later exploited to conceal the truth. It had been a frightening possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.
Now a deputy who had served alongside his father had confirmed that the accident report was a lie.
Michael Reed had not simply been unlucky.
Someone had wanted the investigation to end.
Marcus pressed his palms against the edge of the desk and tried to control his breathing. His father had been dead for two years. For two years, Marcus had carried the memory of a man who taught him to change a tire, helped him with mathematics homework, and always insisted that promises meant something.
He remembered the morning of the funeral.
The sky had been pale and cloudless. His mother had stood beside the grave, holding herself upright through sheer determination. People had come from the sheriff's department, many wearing their uniforms. Richard Harlan had delivered a speech about duty, sacrifice, and the importance of remembering those who served their community.
Aaron Pike had been there too.
Marcus remembered shaking his hand.
He remembered the deputy saying, “Your father was one of the good ones.”
At the time, those words had comforted him.
Now they sounded like a warning.
Marcus opened the notebook again and searched for the entry about Thomas Bell. His father had written the address in a hurry, pressing so hard that the pen had left marks on the page beneath it.
The repair shop was called Bell Electronics. It was located on Mercer Street, close to the northern edge of Bellhaven, in a building that had once housed a small furniture store.
Marcus had been there once as a child.
His father had taken him to buy a replacement cable for an old radio. Thomas Bell had been a thin, soft-spoken man who wore square glasses and spoke to customers as though every broken device contained a mystery worth solving.
Marcus remembered him laughing when his father joked that the radio was older than both of them.
He also remembered his father asking Thomas to hold on to a small envelope.
At the time, Marcus had assumed it contained receipts.
Now he wondered whether it had contained something far more important.
He needed to leave the depot.
The problem was that he did not know whether Aaron Pike was the only person watching him. If he escaped and ran directly to the repair shop, he might lead whoever was following him straight to the evidence.
If he waited, however, he risked being moved somewhere even more isolated.
He approached the window and examined its frame.
The lower section had been loosened from its track. It was not enough to remove the window completely, but the gap might be wide enough for him to reach the latch from the outside if he could climb through.
He pulled the desk toward the wall beneath it.
The legs scraped loudly against the floor.
Marcus froze.
He listened.
Nothing.
He climbed onto the desk and pushed the window upward.
It moved several inches before catching against a rusted bracket.
He pushed harder.
The bracket groaned.
A small fragment of paint fell onto his sleeve.
Marcus stopped and looked toward the door.
No footsteps.
He tried again, this time lifting the frame slightly before pushing it upward. The window slid another few inches.
Cold air entered the room.
He could see a narrow strip of ground beyond the wall, littered with broken bricks and weeds.
The opening was barely large enough.
He climbed onto the desk, turned sideways, and began working his shoulders through the gap.
The metal frame scraped against his jacket.
For a moment, he became stuck.
Panic surged through him.
He imagined someone opening the door and finding him halfway through the window. He imagined Pike dragging him back inside, or Harlan arriving to discover that the notebook was still in his possession.
He forced himself to breathe.
Slowly, he twisted his body and pushed with his legs.
His shoulders cleared the frame.
He dropped awkwardly onto the ground outside, striking his knee against a concrete block.
Pain shot up his leg.
Marcus bit back a cry and crouched beside the wall.
The depot extended behind him, its outer wall streaked with rust and rainwater. Beyond a row of discarded machinery lay a narrow service road leading toward a patch of trees.
He could hear traffic in the distance.
He had no phone, no money, and no way to know whether anyone had already noticed his escape.
But he had his father's notebook.
And for the first time since his detention, he was outside the locked room.
Marcus moved toward the trees.
He did not run immediately. He remembered something his father had taught him during a camping trip years earlier: panic made people careless. If he ran blindly, he might stumble into a road or reveal his direction to anyone watching.